These blankets I knit for my babies take a long time. 130 stitches per row, 238 rows, all on 4.5mm needles. I’ve knitted 93 rows so far, and I just have eight more rows before I’ll need to start purling the initial. That means we need to finalize the name for this baby.
I love talking about baby names. I’ll talk about names for my baby, your baby, boy names, girl names. I think it’s the dreaming aspect of it. New babies are so very exciting — let’s name them all.
Here’s how we named our first two kids. When I was pregnant with David, we didn’t know his gender. We picked a boy name and a girl name and, when he was born, he got the boy name. When I got pregnant with Mary Virginia, we found out she was a girl so we used the girl name we had waiting in the wings.
Now we’re out of names. For some reason, girl names are easier for me — I have twelve girl names ready and I could easily come up with more. But boy names? David. That’s my only boy name.
Naming our third child has been harder than our first two. Perhaps because, now that we have children, we know more kids, so now we have associations with names that would have been on our list.
Tom and I like names that are classic, Biblical, and are family names. The last one is probably the most important; David Andrew and Mary Virginia are both meaningful family names.
When we asked David what we should name this baby, there was a teeny tiny part of me that hoped he’d come out with something that we’d like. His suggestion, of course, was that we name the baby Caleb. In his defense, that definitely counts as a family name.
We’re pretty sure we have a name, but we still have about seven weeks (or, more pressing, eight rows) to change our minds.
Are we the only ones who have a harder time naming second, third, fourth children? How did you decide on names for your children?
And, while you’re at it, we’re open to suggestions.
We can’t agree on names. Ryan likes names from the 80s and 90s. His list is the top 10 baby names from 1987, and mine are all earthy and weird, the top 10 strange names from 2020. Those 2 list don’t overlap, Ashley and Indigo fall on different types of lists. And yes I agree that it gets harder with more kids. Will, my middle child who is named after my dad, told us “why don’t you name the new baby after Pa, call him Bill?” “Well, son you’ve already got that one.”
I have a bunch of boy names, but future girls? No clue. I got my girl and used my favorite girl name so I wouldn’t know where to start. Boy names in my book? Silas, Noah, Jack & Oliver
I love talking baby names too!!!! We had three boy names when pregnant with the first boy. He used up 2 of those. The leftover became the 2nd boy’s name, and we spent nine months (and one day) trying to come up with a middle name. Our criteria were that it was 1. strong 2. single syllable 3. with meaning. We kept going over the same list and not liking any. After he was born, on a whim, I suggested Ford, as 2 of our best friends from seminary were Bradford and Crawford. Men who love the Lord, are great husbands, fathers, friends. Important to us!
So, I think that since you and Tom went to college together and y’all have been friends with your friends for SO long now, they should basically be considered family and their names should enter the list … this could give you a Rob, or a Ryan, or a Tanner!
If you definite with the real family names, how bout Chris. Kind of after your sister??!!?
Happy Baby Names!!! 🙂
We know if our 4th is a boy, he will be named after Brian’s dad so that is super easy. If it is a girl, I am at a complete loss. There doesn’t seem to be anything I like as much as our first two girls’ names (Annabelle and Beatrice) and that “goes” with them. We made the mistake of telling Brian’s family the girl name that we both liked and they vetoed it so vehemently that it completely ruined the name for me. So, if we have a girl, I am going to take a Facebook poll after she is born and we’ll just see how that turns out.
We love Biblical names too. So my vote is Samuel, which was obviously my top boy name…and our runner up was Benjamin. Good ones in my opinion!
samuel and benjamin are TWO of my favorites!! but we have friends with both boys 😉
Wait, I just put that together. Don’t do Chris Krieger. Sounds a bit like Kris Kringle.
haha! yeah, i actually suggested chris to tom a while ago (it’s his middle name) and tom let me in on the “chris krieger” thing. we also can’t use freddie 😉